Previously on Linc: Linc has heard voices since he was a kid, but they’re not what they seem. He can hear other people’s thoughts, but the ability has left him friendless and homeless. When a mysterious corporation, Genetitech, tracks him down and offers to train him to use his skills, Linc doesn’t know if he can trust them. Now their infiltrating the police to question a prisoner…

For the first part of the story…tehirschler.tumblr.com/Linc

Linc immediately thought that Terrance was having the craziest, most incongruent thoughts imaginable for a guy being questioned by the police. He couldn’t figure out why he would thinking of bring at the beach when he was being questioned by the police. His confusion must have shown on his face because Terrance did a Looney Tunes worthy double take. Linc shut his mouth, which had been hanging slightly open, and nodded at Terrance as if nothing were amiss.  Terrance’s gaze lingered long enough for Linc to hear him think, “what a strange guy,” before he turned back to Joe’s line of questioning.

With his efforts refocused Terrance went back to thinking of the beach in Hawaii. It went on like this for at least another five minutes, with Linc trying to puzzle through it the whole time, before the pieces snapped into place. Terrance was thinking about the beach during the questions that would be agitating to a guilty man, like ‘where were you during the robbery’ for instance, but not during baseline questions, like ‘what color is the sky?’. He was using a relaxation technique, meditating almost, to fool the lie detector into thinking he wasn’t nervous. Linc recognized what he was up to because he had done similar things to disassociate, what his psychiatrist called it, from his experiences at the mental institution. If he hadn’t learned how to go to his happy place, being in the mental institution would have made him insane. The joke, of course, was on Terrance since it wasn’t a real lie detector; he was wasting all kinds of energy on trying to fool some spare computer parts.

The knowledge of what Terrance was up to freed him to try to dig deeper into the man’s mind and find some real answers. The chance to test out his skills for real excited Linc and made him a little uneasy. Mostly he was excited, though.

If you liked this, please check out my first novel, Avenue of the Dead, on Kindle